Yuma Proving Ground celebrates Earth Day 2024
As a natural laboratory for testing virtually every piece of equipment in the U.S. Army’s ground combat arsenal, every day is Earth Day at Yuma Proving Ground (YPG).
To perform its vital mission for the warfighter, YPG has a vested interest in responsible ecological stewardship of its portion of North America’s most biologically diverse desert.
YPG is home to a vast array of wildlife, including Sonoran pronghorn, desert tortoises, and one of Arizona’s healthiest populations of bighorn sheep. More than a hundred unique bird species pass through or call YPG home.
“YPG is a natural laboratory,” said Daniel Steward, YPG wildlife biologist. “We need healthy native
vegetation out here for our testing, for a variety of native trees and our training, and our wildlife.” plants: Palo Verde, Ironwood, Honey
In 2022, YPG’s Environmental Mesquite, and Desert Willow, among Sciences Division began a pilot others. project to plant native species of “We try to gather local seeds from plants and trees around populated this hardened desert environment,” areas of post and sustain the saplings said Steward. “Anything we can get without irrigation systems. Toward ndthe kids to germinate out for us, we’d this end, workers have planted the like to put in the ground somewhere, saplings using water boxes, which whether it is on the cantonment area are three-gallon lidded polyurethane or out on the range.” buckets that slowly wick water onto On the Thursday before Earth the plant’s roots over the course of Day, the Environmental Sciences months and are refilled by rainwater Division set up shop in the cafeteria or condensation. Planting saplings at Price School, teaching two groups in vertical shafts in the center of the of kindergarten through fifth-grade devices also shields them from the students about seed biology and intense heat of the desert floor until helping them plant the seeds in they grow hardier. individual plastic pots decorated with
“We’ve done a lot of construction paper and crayons by experimentation with water boxes each student. The next step for plants so we can grow trees without the that successfully sprout will be need to come in and irrigate later,” repotting them in the Environmental said Steward. “It’s not practical for Science Division’s still-evolving us to haul a water trailer out to water plant nursery. things over and over. We’re doing “You can’t just buy a tree and things with dirt berms, so it will expect it will do well in the desert naturally catch the water behind the environment,” said Steward. plant.” “Sometimes it takes a lot of special
After planting saplings the past care and attention for desert plants.” two years to celebrate Earth Day, Though this winter was wetter this year YPG Environmental than normal, sometimes the local Sciences Division personnel got a desert goes the better part of a year hand from schoolchildren at YPG’s without any rain at all.
James D. Price Elementary School “We’ve seen some really incredible in attempting to germinate seeds eruptions of plants we haven’t seen in a long time,” said Steward. “We did a survey downrange this week: we counted 16 plants last year, and 143 this year. It’s exciting to see that ebb and flow of the desert, and when you get a good green year, it helps get a lot of seeds for the seed bank.”
At present, the nursery boasts scores of trees that are ready to plant now, and a few hundred more in various stages of nurturing to prepare them for the intense desert environment.
“We’ve gotten native soil from YPG and potting soil that has a lot of the nutrients for the saplings to get larger,” said Joshua Lightner, natural resources specialist. “Larger plants with a more mature root have a much better chance of survival downrange.”
Some of the more mature trees that were cultivated in the nursery have already been planted.
“We just started using them in a levy project downrange,” said Lightner. “We’ve planted some mesquites as part of the habitat improvement there for mule deer and pronghorn.”
The Environmental Sciences Division hopes to foster even more involvement in the nursery in the future.
“One of the things I would like to do once we have the facility completed is to open this up to volunteers and have a community garden,” said Steward. “We’ll have to have a volunteer champion who can be out every week to accomplish that.”